Main content

Home

Menu

Loading wiki pages...

View
Wiki Version:
Hall, Johansson and Strandberg (2012) have recently used the choice blindness paradigm to show that people often fail to notice when they are told that they had answered a question about a moral issue in the opposite way than they had actually done (e.g. they were told they had disagreed with state surveillance, even though they had agreed with it when asked before). Moreover, people had no trouble to argue for this new position, completely reversed from the one they had held just a few minutes before. The observed phenomenon supports the current theories of moral judgment that emphasize the ability to rationalize judgments post hoc (Haidt, 2001). However, as Hall et al. (2012) mention, their results pose a problem even for these intuitionist theories – it is not clear, why people do not notice the manipulation if they have the same intuitions when presented with a moral issue for the second time. One possible explanation consistent with intuitionist theories is that people quickly come up with rationalizations for their previous answers while thinking about the moral issue for the second time. If that is the case, we would expect that the specific time when the previous answer is shown will influence the probability of noticing the change of the answer. That is, we expect that people will be more likely to notice the change if they are shown their previous answer after reading a description of the moral issue than if they are shown the answer before reading the description. The rationale for our expectation is that reading the description for the second time without seeing any previous answer will likely induce the same intuition as the first reading. However, reading the description while being aware of the previous answer will lead to the immediate rationalization of that answer and thus weaken the influence of intuition. Consequently, the probability of noticing the manipulation and/or reversing the manipulated answer to its original should increase in the former case. If empirical data support our expectations, they will provide an answer to the objection of Hall et al. (2012) against intuitionist moral theories. However, if the time of the presentation of a previous answer does not affect the probability of noticing the manipulation, it will strengthen the objection, possibly questioning validity of Haidt’s (2001) social intuitionist model. <br> References Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. *Psychological Review, 108*, 814-834. Hall, L., Johansson, P. & Strandberg, T. (2012). Lifting the veil of morality: Choice blindness and attitude reversals on a self-transforming survey. *PloS One, 7*(9), e45457.
OSF does not support the use of Internet Explorer. For optimal performance, please switch to another browser.
Accept
This website relies on cookies to help provide a better user experience. By clicking Accept or continuing to use the site, you agree. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and information on cookie use.
Accept
×

Start managing your projects on the OSF today.

Free and easy to use, the Open Science Framework supports the entire research lifecycle: planning, execution, reporting, archiving, and discovery.